


Good Timing

by Printed_Soot



Category: Captain America (Movies), Iron Man (Movies), MCU, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers - Ambiguous Fandom, Thor (Movies), TiMER (2009)
Genre: But I do mention Thor 2, F/F, F/M, Fluff warnings, Jarvis is a snarky bastard, M/M, Multi, Not Phase 2 compliant, So many ships, crossover fic, it's so fluffy I'm gonna die, seriously
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-21
Updated: 2014-08-21
Packaged: 2018-02-14 01:58:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 13,525
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2173776
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Printed_Soot/pseuds/Printed_Soot
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Tony Stark was 17 he woke up in the middle of his lab on the upper floor of his Brownstone, surrounded by empty booze bottles, his bio-chem notes, his AI notes, a book on the philosophy of time, a new-age book of crap about collective memory, and a book with a crackpot theory of how the brain perceives love with a sore wrist and a small, metal rectangle imbedded in his skin.</p><p>This is a TiMER crossover. Hold onto your hats.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Tony

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Instigator](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Instigator/gifts), [Saathi1013](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Saathi1013/gifts).



> I'm blaming Instigator and Maskedfangirl for this one.

     When Tony Stark was 17 and newly orphaned, he invented two things in a grief-and-gin-soaked blur of compressed time.  First, he finished his father’s last plans for a new missile guidance system while he was mostly sober. Some days afterward, he woke up in the middle of his lab on the upper floor of his Brownstone, surrounded by his bio-chem notes, his AI notes, a book on the philosophy of time, a new-age book of crap about collective memory, and a book with a crackpot theory of how the brain perceives love with a sore wrist and a small, metal rectangle imbedded in his skin.

     After spending some time trying to figure out what he had built, he came to the conclusion that he had invented something that, in theory, would predict when he would find love.

     His was blank, but on reflection, and with a horrible hangover fighting with the bitterness and loneliness that had blindsided him (it’s not even like he was close to his parents, not like they even really ever liked him) he decided that he just needed more people to have them, because the stupid thing couldn’t work if nobody else had them to gather up the data necessary.

    So he did what any hungover, rich, orphaned, underage, technical genius college student would do. He found more alcohol, and built more. Then he went to the nearest bar, and offered a free drink to anybody who wanted to try it out.

    Two of them went off that very night, as soon as they had gotten put on. 

     When Obie showed up to give him the sales numbers on the missile guidance system, and found him programming more of the things, he sheepishly told him about the idea behind it, and said that he was aware it probably wasn’t going to make any money, but that he’d just tinker with it on his own time. He said he wanted to see if the theory was sound. He didn’t say he just didn’t want to be alone. Obie wouldn’t have understood that.

     But Obie didn’t laugh at him. He just rubbed his chin in that way he did when his father had said something offhandedly that sounded crazy, but always, _always_ ended up increasing the fortunes of everyone around him.  Obie patted Tony on the shoulder and said, “Son, _governments_ pay for war. But if you want to sell to people—you sell them love. And there are more people than there are governments.”

     In the first month, the new Stark TiMERs sold over 100,000 units.

     His stayed blank, the line of half-formed 0s mocking him. 


	2. Natasha

     The first time Natasha saw a TiMER, it was on the wrist of a dead man with more hair than sense, and a propensity for making money by selling secrets. She knew about them before that, of course, it was another one of those things that proved the frivolity and wastefulness of the Capitalist West. At least, it was when her supervisors had first heard about it. 

     When study after study had proven that the things actually seemed to work, they were another sign that the Capitalist weapons manufacturing empire of the Starks needed to be watched carefully. 

     And, of course, her supervisors looked for ways to exploit them.

     Since nobody in the motherland could figure out _how_ they worked, they set about to use them.

     The TiMER was, hands down, the single best way of insinuating yourself into someone’s life. If they had one, and it was blank, hijack the signal, make it make the binglely noise it when it turns on, and make sure they can hear yours do the same.  They won’t check the numbers, they will have been waiting to hear that noise for years. After that, they _want_ to love you, and get you into their lives as fast as possible. And they will give you anything you ask for. 

     And after you’ve taken what you want and gotten the information, they never expected the knife in the back.

     If they’d got one, and it had a time already on it, it was a bit harder.  But a woman, lonely, with a timer that shows a date a long time in the future, who is just looking for a fling, or some fun, with no strings attached, is, in her experience, a woman who is of no threat, and desperate, and men and women would fight to get a chance to be with her. 

     If they don’t have one, just…don’t have one, and talk about how you aren’t sure about them. It breaks the ice, it’s a built in way of having something in common with them, and from there it is a short hop to getting them to fall desperately in love with you.

     The database where all the information was stored was…fairly impossible to crack into. But they eventually figured out how to just temporarily hijack signals sent out by the little things, and send back false positives. 

     And then the money ran out, and priorities shifted, and the red curtain fell. And Natasha found herself on her own, and she began to see the advantages of a capitalist work ethic. She may have borrowed one of the little machines they had been using to insert new signals into TiMERs. She knew how it worked. And since she was working for herself now, she wanted all the advantages she could muster.

     And she was pretty sure she could keep it working. She was adaptable. It was her strength. And fake TiMERs were cheap, easy, and most people were really unobservant.

     Then she got a new start on life, thanks to a cocky blond American who didn’t have the balls to just shoot her already. And she got a new team, thanks to a blunt, one-eyed dangerous man who kept his secrets closer than even _she_ did, and finally a new family; since Tony Stark, on top of his various character flaws, just couldn’t resist putting them all in his house and treating them like she _knew_ he’d treat any family he had that he’d actually liked.

     She wondered if he knew that it was really only the luck of timing that she hadn’t been told to kill him when he was 20, that her Russian masters had run out of their funding, and sent her out into the world with no idea who she was, and no idea what she should do.

     And of course, sometimes, she had to shake her head at the supreme irony of living with Captain America. The very _symbol_ of the Capitalist West who was quickly becoming the brother she never had.  It made her early life feel very far away, and even more surreal.

     Tony was the only one of them who had a TiMER.  The first one, as a matter of fact. It was significantly larger and less sleek than the newest versions, but it remained blank. 

     She felt sorry for him. All the intel she had said that he had made the things while black-out drunk after his parents had died. She could look around at the little family of misfits he’d cajoled and insulted and bribed into living with him, and she could read the signs of a desperately lonely man. It wasn’t subtle. She thought that even Clint could tell.

     She dealt with her triple life as Natasha Romanov, Director Fury’s left hand, Black Widow, the killer atoning for past sins with the Avengers, and Natalie Rushman, the Stark Industries/Avengers/SHEILD Liaison, remarkably well. 

     She asked, once, why _she_ was the liaison, and not, say, Tony Stark, and Fury and Pepper both gave her identical looks. Fury just said “You did the report on him. Why do _you_ think we’re asking you?”

     Pepper had agreed and immediately reinstated “Natalie” as Pepper’s PA. It gave her an excuse to be everywhere. It didn’t hurt that she genuinely liked Pepper. Efficient, graceful, brave, and so unlike any other woman she’d ever known. Pepper knew exactly who she was, and Natasha admired that.

     Most of the time, being a part of three different worlds was easy—Fury didn’t want to make trouble with the Avengers, The Avengers didn’t really want trouble with SHIELD, and Pepper made sure that she was kept well enough informed to make her job as the go-between easy.

     Sometimes, though, it created…complications.

     She looked down at the data given to her by Fury. The mark was supremely paranoid, and he was extremely dangerous.  He was hard to get in to see, and harder to talk with for any length of time. It had been years since she had used the TiMER to get close to somebody, but she looked for that information out of reflex. He had a TiMER—and a blank one at that, but he wasn’t a fool, and in the security notes it mentioned that his security system was Stark Tech and it scanned for real TiMERs. But he was in a country with no extradition, and he was trafficking in mutant body parts. And the intel was pretty sure that he was between shipments, which meant he had to be taken out swiftly before more mutants died to feed the grotesque black market. 

     She needed to get close to him, fast, and normally she would use a fake TiMER, but with the new security measures…

     She considered her options, and went to talk to Tony.

     Tony stared at her. “How did a guy like that get my tech?”

     She rolled her eyes. “Not the point. The point is, can you give me a fake TiMER that will pass muster?”

     Tony snorted. “You gonna pervert my twoo-wuv tech to kill a scumbag?”  He sighed. “Don’t tell me how long you’ve done that.”

     She felt her lips curl up into a slightly inadvertent smile. Tony, she’d found, could have that effect on her. “I won’t.”

     Tony gave her that slightly worried look that said that he wasn’t sure about his statement not to ask, but he wasn’t actually going to ask. He sighed. “So. How many of the attempts to hack into the TiMER database were you?”

     Natasha gave him a wide-eyed innocent look. “You know I’m not a computer person.”

     “Ah hah. Right.”

    “I just need to get close to him, get the information, and make sure he isn’t going to kill anybody else.”

     Tony looked pained. “You aren’t telling Cap about this, right?”

    “I don’t think he needs to know. This is SHEILD business.”

     Tony tapped his fingers along the edge of his worktable, his eyes far away and looking into . “I know that system he’s got. That’s the best I’ve got out, and,” he tapped the file she had, “It looks like he’s kept up with the upgrades. A fake one won’t cut it. You need the real deal.”

     Natasha blinked and gave him a quick look.

     Tony shrugged. “Look. I don’t know how many people you and people like you offed using my tech, but, uh. Our liability guys noticed. They got me to design some serious security into that system, and to the TiMERs themselves. So, unless you’ve actually got a real one…”

     She allowed her expression to give him a quizzical look. “But a real one won’t be able to make him think I’m his match.”

     Tony drummed his fingers on the table for a moment more. “JARVIS? Its for a good cause. I won’t hack into your system for this…”

     JARVIS's voice smoothly interjected itself into the conversation. “My moral programming is fully functional. Ms. Romanov, are you going to kill this man or bring him to justice?”

     Natasha felt her heart sink—Tony she could manipulate. JARVIS was…more difficult. “I…will bring him in alive if possible.”

     There was silence in the workshop. She glanced at Tony in case he could help her, but he looked as poleaxed as she felt.  JARVIS's smooth british accented english came back. “I take it all other measures have been tried?”

     She nodded. 

     “Then I will allow access to the secure data in this instance. It is the moral thing to do. Do try to bring him in alive.”

     Tony looked proud enough to burst. “Ok. You heard the man.”

     She raised her eyebrow at Tony.

     Tony shrugged. “As soon as I built JARVIS, I gave him control of the data. Good thing too, between my kidnapping and Obidiah’s little game of selling everything we owned to terrorists…”

     JARVIS cut in. “I will erase the data instantly in case of catastrophe.”

     Natasha privately thought that this explained a lot about the “impossible to hack” security system. _Nobody_ in her previous employ was going to win against JARVIS. 

     Tony nodded. “Right. So if we give Nat a TiMER, then zero out her data, the connect it to Mr. Etorne…”

     “Ms. Romanov will be Mr. Etorne’s official TiMER match.”

     Tony gave her an apologetic smile. “It’ll render your TiMER useless though, since we have to detach it from your actual thread.”

     “I’ll deal with it. Romance isn’t something that’s in the cards for me, besides. I doubt I’ve got anybody out there.”

     Tony gave her a sympathetic look.

 

*

 

    The actual process was something of an anti-climax. It was a simple pinch, barely more than it would be to just stick on a fake one. But at the moment of activation, something strange happened.

     The little rectangle made a noise, and binged. Numbers scrolled across the surface. 

     0021d 003h 20m 12s

     Three weeks. She didn’t say anything, and pretended to ignore Tony’s look of concern. She gave him a carefully calculated look of impatience, and he shrugged.

     “JARVIS. Go.”

     And it blanked out. And then reactivated, and beeped again, scrolling numbers that matched to a very bad man living on his own private island.

     She wondered if Tony had memorized the date. She was curious, if nothing else.


	3. Bruce

     By the time Bruce started college, all anybody was talking about was how Tony Stark, at 17, had combined science fiction and philosophy and programming and artificial intelligence know-how to make the insipid TiMERs that had obsessed his high school classmates and had taken over the idiotic celebrity magazines.  

     He personally thought that Tony had been somehow damaged by the death of his parents, and was misusing his gifts on stupid fairytales.  He was loudly skeptical of the annoying little clocks, and annoyed at how much weight their so-called predictions were given by those who used them.  He thought that the things hadn’t been around long enough to warrant the reaction, and if they hadn’t been attached to the Stark name, they would have been a passing fad. Besides, he may have been slightly bitter because he didn’t _dare_ get one because he was still living at home during the summer and there was about a 50% chance it’d go off for someone with only one X chromosome. He didn’t particularly care for broken bones or blackened eyes, and he definitely wanted to survive to the day he was able to leave his father behind and never, ever speak to him again.

     He was a bit disappointed that they still held their fascination even beyond the first year of college. On the other hand, when people weren’t talking about them like idiots, they _were_ fascinating.    Biologically, they seemed to measure neuronal impulses, chemical reactions, and all sorts of biological information and chemical and biological reactions. He wanted to study them, and when he met Betty, and _she_ also thought that the “true love” aspect of them was bunk, but shared his fascination with them…they hit it off, two bare wrists, walking about the hallowed halls of Harvard.

     He shifted from pure biology into a more focused study of radiation and bio-chem.  As the years went on, and the studies about the TiMERS rolled in, he had to admit that there must be _something_ there—even the undergraduate research that Bruce and Betty had thought would disprove the damn things actually showed that they had a remarkable ability to monitor extremely minute changes in oxytocin, seratonin and cortisol, as well as electrical impulses from the  media insula, the limibic system, and the anterior cingulate cortex.  And that, combined with the predictive programming of the damnable things and what science already knew about the way peoples’ emotional connections are influenced by their chemical make-up…well, both he and Betty had to consider that the idiotic little boxes were actually measuring something real.  Even if the idea was creepy as hell.

     When they met back up after graduation at Culver for the biggest damn mistake of Bruce’s life, he spied a glint of metal on her wrist under her lab coat.  It was blank—her person hadn’t gotten theirs yet.  He remembered, before getting into the chair to test out his theory, that he’d go in and get one himself after he proved his theory was sound, and his funding was assured.  He figured that would be a good way to propose. Or get shot down, horribly, awfully. But nothing ventured, nothing earned, and he was feeling cocky at that point.

     He never did get that funding; his theory was shit and he turned into a monster. True Love was…not going to happen at that point.  And then he was on the run and trying to not kill anybody, and trying to keep his head down and his temper frozen into a hard rock of ice. And he buried his hopes and dreams deep in his mind.

     When he found himself in front of a TiMER installation store in the middle of South America, those hopes and dreams came roaring back, and he couldn’t resist. He had been good; normal and small for years and he walked in like a normal person and bought one and had it installed. The damn thing went on the fritz as soon as it was installed. He assumed the radiation in his body was messing with it. He had just…wanted to know when the next time he’d see Betty would be, if ever. Instead…it seemed to flip between two different times. Sometimes it showed a date that was about 5 years in the future, and sometimes it showed a date that was 6 years in the future.  And then, sometimes it was just blank, completely blank, like it had never been activated.

     005y 08m 02d 06h and 006y 06m 11d 01h. He calculated it out, once. May 4th, 2012, and July 15th, 2013.

     And the first time he hulked out after that, in Harlem, it fell off. He didn’t even have a scar to mark where it had been, to show that he had once been normal and small and able to hope that he could have a family or even just a long term lover. 

     He knew the dates, though. He always had a head for numbers. Even if it didn’t mean anything, even if it was just feeding himself false hope, even if it meant he’d just have two dates taunting him, he couldn’t shake the knowledge that those damnable things were better then they had any right to be.


	4. Pepper

     When Virginia “Pepper” Potts was 14 and legally able to get a TiMER, she didn’t do it. Her parents didn’t really approve, and it still wasn’t clear what the impact having one would have on her future employment prospects. Her friends mostly had them—they all sighed over their dates, writing them in their notebooks and minds with hearts around them, and declaring in heartfelt tones that they wouldn’t date _anyone_ , and save themselves for their One True Love.

     Pepper could see the appeal, but with all the pressure heaped on the unlucky ones who got a blank one, or the pity that got put on the ones who got numbers so high they would be _old_ by the time they found their person…she generally thought they were more trouble then they were worth. And besides. She could (and did) blame her bare wrist on her strict parents. 

     And then there just never seemed any point to it—she had realized an equal attraction to men and women in college, and men were, frankly, too much work to bother with. As for women; she didn’t think she’d bother with the difficulty of coming out, and all the attendant problems that being romantically involved with a women would cause her in her career and personal life. So, she figured, it was better to just leave it off and say it was for personal, familial, beliefs about the devices.

     So even after she started to work for Stark Industries as an accountant, she didn’t have one. After she had dared to tell Mr. Stark himself his math was off and he decided to make her his Personal Assistant, she figured it would look bad—especially since he, famously, had a blank one that had stayed blank since he had invented them.

     She maybe fell in love a little bit. 

     And then one horrible day, he disappeared into the desert of Afganistan, taken by terrorists, and she spent three months in terror and grieving over her loss. She may have gotten a little bit drunk one night, staring at the latest report that showed nothing, the newest message that ate away at her hope, and she had a (drunken) brilliant idea. She knew how she felt about him.  And he told her that he needed her. And she felt like she’d be alright if she could get some hint, some glimpse of hope that he was still alive.

     So, she went to the TiMER department of Stark Industries, and there were, indeed, some people there, and they were more than happy to oblige her thin thread of hope. She got them to install one in her. And it turned on. And stayed blank.

     She almost ripped it out and threw it away in disgust.

     When he came back, and her wrist remained blank, and so did his, she decided that she didn’t care what her wrist said; she was going to take care of him until he no longer needed her.

     He wasn’t her One True Love, but he was alive. And that was more important. 

     They were both adults, so they knew that just because they weren’t “destined” to be together forever didn’t mean that they had to be alone. And they did love each other. They didn’t talk about what would happen if one or the other’s TiMER suddenly started working, and they both understood why neither of them wanted to give up. 

     Three years later she was the CEO of Stark Industries and her wrist beeped.  A number flashed on it, then, just as quickly, went blank again.  She didn’t exactly panic, but she called the techs in R&D up and she spoke slightly more sternly then she meant to to the TiMER technicians, to talk about the glitch.  They were as baffled as she was. They all said they’d never heard of that happening before—but she and Tony were close, so she should ask him.

     When she asked Tony, he just asked her if she could remember what it had flashed. 

     About three weeks, she said. 

     He gave her a hard look, licked his lips, and then shrugged. “I think we should see what happens in three weeks.”

     They had the most mind-blowing sex they had ever had in their time together that night just before they agreed that it was the last time.

 

 


	5. Clint

     By the time Clint had the money for a TiMER, he was already a world class sniper, and he figured he wouldn’t survive the first gulf war. Not only that, it wasn’t really fair to his hypothetical future boyfriend—he was definitely career military, and he couldn’t risk anybody finding out that his TiMER wouldn’t go off for a lady.

     When he was recruited to the more…liberal, policy-wise, SHIELD, it was more a matter of clearance—he was moving up in clearance levels _fast_. Faster, after he met, fought, and disobeyed orders to kill a pretty Russian lady, and finally turned her into an asset for SHIELD.  He got sent on the really strange missions after that—and expecting his hypothetical husband to just….accept that he couldn’t tell him anything about his life without killing him, or worse, having the thing go off, and NOT being able to do anything about it, or, having it go off when he starred down a scope at a target, and meeting his eyes that way…

     Yeah. It was better this way. Besides. ‘Tasha had gotten him into enough trouble, and he wasn’t even destined to be with her. He could only imagine what kind of shit he’d get himself into if his One True Love was on the line. 

     By the time the aliens and gods had wrecked New York, and he was fucked over by a goddamn unholy combination of the two, he didn’t want to let anybody else into his head, and he could only imagine how much those things had to be in your head to make them work. 

     In Stark’s trashed penthouse, after Thor had tied up…him, and the rest of them were stuck looking at one another and he really got a moment to take in the fact that, holycrap, _CAPTAIN AMERICA_ was right there and he _fought with him_ and he wasn’t entirely sure what was real, and he hoped this was real, because holy _shit_ , the Captain was just as awesome as he’d thought he’d be; he saw the big green guy look at him quizzically.  He got poked by a finger the size of a goddamn summer sausage, and looked up and into golden eyes. The Hulk..sniffed him, smiled down at him, and then patted him on the head, somewhat gently.  

     In the ruins of the schwarma joint later, with all of them eating silently and automatically in the aftermath of as bad and intense a battle as he’d ever been in, his mind a haze of exhaustion, guilt, and gibbering, bone-deep terror of what had happened to him, he heard Bruce, the tweedy-cute alter ego of the big green monster that had the DoD shaking in their boots, muttering tiredly to himself. Clint didn’t think anybody else could hear him. Or maybe they could and just didn’t care—he was never sure how loud the stuff he could hear was.

     “May 4th, 2012. Of course. Figures. Maybe it was an alien. That’d be just my luck. I hope the other guy didn’t crush them.”

     Natasha had given Bruce an odd look over Clint’s shoulder at that, and Bruce fell silent again.

     They went their separate ways after that, and he went back to SHEILD. He didn’t go any higher in clearance level, and he didn’t expect or care to; not any more, not when he knew how fragile his mind really was, not when he still wondered why Fury didn’t just have him shot.

     And then they all got a message from Stark. Stark wanted them to go live with him. In New York. In his tower. And Fury told him that it might be best if he was an Avenger first, and a SHIELD agent second, and that hurt. But he understood. And it was a bit of a relief, really. He’d killed too many co-workers. Too many of them avoided him, and he hadn’t really been sent out on an active op since…since he got his mind back.  And Fury said that Natasha was going to be the liaison—she was already the Stark Industries/SHIELD Liaison, and she might as well just also be the SHEILD/Avengers liaison as well. And he got to live with _Captain America_. So things could have been worse.

     Bruce was already there, Tony had built him a lab. They were already good friends, but Clint could get Bruce to laugh in a way that nobody else seemed to be able to, in a way that seemed to surprise Bruce most of all.

     The Hulk seemed to like him too—he seemed protective of him, which was weird, but he also liked Tony, and seemed to respect the Captain and Natasha. He didn’t get along with the God, but…frankly, Clint often thought that was something he had in common with Bruce’s aggressive alter ego.

     He developed a crush on Bruce, which was seven kinds of stupid, but, hey, the guy was smart, hot, and probably the bravest guy he’d ever met.  He watched him wake up, over and over, not knowing where he was, or if he’d lost control and hurt people, and _willingly_ give himself over to the control of a monster that clearly scared the shit out of him to help his team and to save the world.

     Clint could respect that.

     He caught Bruce looking appreciatively, once, when he gave him his shirt after an op that went a bit south. That was all the cue he needed; after years of clandestine encounters, he knew the signs, and hot damn. He had always had a _thing_ for tweedy guys. 

     It took some doing, Bruce wasn’t exactly a touchy-feely guy, and he had some (understandable) hangups about sex and touching and shit, but they managed. They were an item, and they were friends, and they had something in common that nobody but Natasha could touch—they knew what it was like to wake up in a field of destruction and know you caused it. Know you killed people—maybe even people you cared about. But even Nat, for all her brainwashing, usually had control over what she was doing, even if she would’t have chosen it if she hadn’t been brainwashed. He finally talked about Loki to somebody he wasn’t required to under threat of getting a bullet to the face. And Bruce didn’t say anything stupid to him, he just put his hand on Clint’s shoulder and fell silent, helping him mourn for what he couldn’t control. 

     Bruce told him about Betty, and they shared their bitterness about TiMERs and how awkward it was to live with the guy who invented the damn things.  They talked about avoiding them because they couldn’t take the chance it’d go off for a dude instead of a lady, and commiserated about shitty fathers. And Clint found out that Bruce had had a TiMER for a short while. And how _that_ had turned out. 

     Bruce had laughed bitterly, “I remember the two dates the damn thing kept flashing, when it wasn’t just zeros or completely blank. One was the date of the Battle of New York. The other…” Clint could see the pain in Bruce’s shrug. “It’ll end up being July 15, 2013.” I used to think those might be dates I’d see Betty again, but…well.” He shook his head. “I… met lots of new people that day. And aliens. But not her. And mostly I was a giant green rage monster.”

     Clint, jokingly, said “You met me.”

     Bruce gave Clint that crooked smile that drove him nuts. “I…yes. I suppose I did.”

     Clint didn’t tell Bruce that the Hulk had met him first and sniffed his hair. It seemed weird to mention it.

     And that was that.


	6. Jane

     Jane got her TiMER at 14 after begging for one for a year.  At 13 it combined the two best things in the world; True Love AND Science.

     She never regretted it. Even when it stayed flashing 0s for years, even as her friends and lab mates had their number appear and meet their persons.  They were just SO COOL. Because they _worked_. And gossip had it that Tony Stark made the first one when he was drunk and taking a philosophy class.  She even bought an extra one to take it apart and see how it worked.  She wanted to put on on a mouse and see if it would work, but she couldn’t get Stark Industries to agree to it.

     By the time she was all graduated from everything and had a PhD AND an intern, she was too busy trying to find out what the hell was going on in the atmosphere and trying to prove the Rosenburg Bridge in New Mexico; she barely thought about her TiMER, and concentrated on physics and metaphysics and wrangling her unqualified, but extremely entertaining intern.  Erik didn’t have a TiMER, and was perfectly happy in his absent minded professor bachelorhood. Darcy had one, but it was set for a long time off, and she was awesome and secure in her waiting, and really, who had time for men?

     Well. Unless that man was a gorgeous combination of science and perfect blond manhood that could travel through time and space AND ALSO prove her theories correct and get her more funding then she’d ever even dreamed of.

     Then she had time for a man. 

     And he left. After a weird alien robot destroyed the town. 

     The next time she saw him it was with her heart in her throat and her stomach somewhere around her knees while she was in a remote observatory, watching the news online as an alien invasion leveled New York. She was on the first shuttle back home, and she waited to see him.

     And waited. And when she asked her contacts at SHIELD, they told her he went home to deal with with his crazy brother.

     So she went back to her work. But now, her TiMER mocked her a bit. She didn’t need somebody RIGHT NOW. She just…wanted to know that someone was Out There. Like, a real person, and not an alien god-king that may or may not ever come back from his home.  So she tried dating. She dated men without TiMERs. 

     But she couldn’t help compare them, unfavorably, to Thor.  They didn’t have his charm, or his physique, or that way he had of making her wildest untested theories seem not only possible, but already proven. Did she mention his body? Because nobody else had that.

     And then he came back. And she got to see his world and saved her own with his help.

     And he left again.

     But this time he came back. He said he was there to stay.

     And she was so, so glad that he probably couldn’t even _get_ a TiMER.  Because he would outlive her. She was, as his father had said, a mayfly to him.  She’d certainly enjoy his company and his love while he was here, and she was alive, and someday, he would go back home and find his one true love.  She knew in her bones why her TiMER was blank. She loved an immortal God-King.

     He asked her about the TiMER, and she told him, and he seemed amused, and fascinated, and said that the Iron Man was truly a sorcerer of great power.  She was reminded that science and magic were the same in Asgard, and she giggled to think of Tony Stark being thought of as a magician by a man who flew because of the power invested into a mythological hammer by a man who REALLY DID talk to a pair of ravens.

     He told her he loved her, and she believed it. She could feel his love, his gentleness, his unshakeable faith in her mind and her bravery.

     She got her TiMER removed. There wasn’t any point in keeping it, after all. It would never turn on. She was ok with that.


	7. Pepper and Natasha

     Pepper felt like she was on pins and needles for the next few weeks. She didn’t know what had happened, but Tony was acting weird(er than usual), like he was keeping a secret from her. Which meant that he most certainly WAS keeping a secret from her and it had to do with her TiMER glitch.

     She wanted to shake him, but she knew she didn’t have to. He’d tell her. He was never very good at not telling her things. And he got closer to telling her every time she glanced at her blank wrist. She could practically see the days/hours/minutes/seconds clicking by in his head. 

     She waited.

     And then he started avoiding her. 

     So she asked JARVIS.

     “I am not authorized to give out information related to TiMERs, Ms. Potts.”

     She glared at one of JARVIS’s cameras. 

     “I…will tell you that Sir is only avoiding you because he is terrible at keeping secrets, and because he isn’t sure his theory is sound.” 

     That did not make her feel any better.

     JARVIS continued, though, with that little bit of dry humor that separated him from just a computer. “I will, however, tell you when, exactly, it should have gone off.”

 _That_ made her feel better. She considered this. “Isn’t that…”

     “I was given the keys to the database with the instruction that I cannot be bribed nor reasoned with regarding this matter. However, since both parties are aware of the exact time of their meeting, I can, and will, fulfill the TiMER’s protocols.”

     Pepper really wished JARVIS would pick a side sometimes, either be a computer or a human. It would have been nice to hear that he was doing this because he held her in high regard.

     With two weeks left to go, Pepper noticed that Natasha had cancelled their bi-monthly Avengers/SHEILD/Stark Industries lunch meeting. She looked forward to those, they always started out with work, but ended up being “what the hell did Tony do this time” bitch fests. 

     Pepper had found, that under “Natalie’s” mask, Natasha was pretty great. She was efficient, cool in a crisis, and she finally had someone who shared her love of expensive shoes, and really _got_ why they mattered.  Natasha thought her wardrobe was amazing—she often pointed out how Pepper had more suits of armor than all of the Avengers put together. Pepper simply shrugged, and pointed out that hers were more versatile, and a lot more fashionable.

     Sometimes Pepper thought about Natasha’s red hair and wide, startling eyes, her strength and her poise when she was alone at night, and she and Tony may have talked about a mutual fantasy involving asking her to join them, but, as Tony said, she might kill him if he asked, and Pepper didn’t want to ruin her relationship with someone who was swiftly becoming her best female friend.  But… she’d noticed that Natasha would comment on her clothes most when she was wearing her “shark” suits—the ones that signaled to other CEOs that she was going to take over their company and drag their stocks through the mud if they didn’t hop to it and deal with her.  So she may have been playing a long game to eventually see if Natasha would be up for it if _Pepper_ asked. 

     Which was obviously moot now. She was waiting on destiny.

     Which meant she had worn her new white suit and these ridiculous heels for…nothing. Twice over—Natasha wasn’t even here, and Pepper was off the market. Ah well. At least they would be broken in, slightly, without showing they were broken in, for the next meeting with the remains of Hammer Tech. 

     Pepper smiled to herself. _That_ project was going just fine. She had very nearly completely dismantled the whole thing, and was just mopping up the poor bits that were hanging on to solvency for dear life. “Ah well,” she thought.

     The next week, she checked with Tony when she noticed that Natasha was still gone—and she hadn’t seen her around the tower much either. 

     Tony said she was doing something he didn’t want to know about with SHEILD. And then, with that little catch in his voice that told her how close he was to bursting out his secret, he said, “I suspect y- _we’ll_ see her in a couple weeks.”

     She didn’t push it. She _wanted_ to, but…what he was sort of trying to not imply was…Natasha was. She didn’t even have—she had…confided that she had…used them, the TiMERs. To get close to people. In her past. But. No. No. She shook her head. The TiMER had finally turned her into one of those crazy people that would take any and all things that coincide with their TiMERs as signs of the divine.

     She left. And when the second meeting was supposed to happen, two days away from the end of the countdown, she dressed in her best suit, and went to her usual restaurant. 

     The night before, sitting in her house, she got a call from JARVIS informing her that within 24 hours she would meet her match. And that if she was not within hearing distance of him, he would call her cell phone. She thanked him. And then drank several glasses of wine.

     She had not expected to meet who-ever-she/or-he was hungover, with butterflies in her stomach.  She didn’t think she’d ever felt so…nervous before when it didn’t actually involve the end of the world or Tony dying. She stared at everyone who walked by that she hadn’t ever seen before. She had her hand on her cell phone. 

     And just after dinner time, her phone rang, and she looked around, searching for her match. She was in the park, and…there was nobody around. She answered the phone. 

     It was Tony. He sounded distracted, and he was talking at too high of a speed. He had been drinking too much coffee, and she thought he was trying to say that he had developed a new type of fabric for Bruce, but she could also tell he hadn’t slept in a day or two, and when she asked him what he had eaten, he had waved vaguely in the direction of DUM-E and said that he’d had a smoothie.

     So. If he was drinking smoothies that his idiotic bot had made, that meant he had been awake for at least 2 days. She put her own issues out of mind and turned quickly to hail a cab.

    She got to the tower, and started toward the workroom. The Tower was mostly empty—the Captain had a charity/press event that day, and she expected that Clint was…wherever Natasha had gone, and Bruce was often gone, off to remote places to meditate.

     And she pressed the button for the elevator.

     And the doors opened. And over the loudspeaker, JARVIS said, with a dry, amused tone. “Bing Bing Bing. I hope you two are happy, I am not supposed to give out encrypted data.”

     Natasha stood there, staring at her, with wide green eyes. 

     Pepper swallowed. They stood there for what seemed like forever. 

     “I hate to interrupt—while I _can_ hold this elevator indefinitely, Sir is attempting to drink another one of DUM-E’s dubious creations, and is past the point of listening to me.”

     Pepper laughed, suddenly, and slightly hysterically. She leaned against the wall, and let herself go.

     When she stopped, she saw Natasha giving her a considering look, like she was seeing her for the first time all over again. Natasha patted the wall next to her, and Pepper joined her.

     “I have a tranquilizer I didn’t use.”  Natasha’s voice was sardonic and warm.

     Pepper gaped at her for a moment, then sighed. “That might be for the best.”

     “Good.” Natasha paused for a moment, and when she next spoke, there was a hesitancy in her voice that Pepper had never _ever_ heard. “Ah. So. You are my…what…Match?”

     Pepper felt her face flush. “I. Yes. I guess so. Yes.”

     Natasha smiled, warm and easy, and somehow more open then Pepper had ever seen her. “I…” She reached out, pulled back, and then reached out again to touch Pepper’s face. “Good.”

     Pepper touched Natasha’s hand, and cocked her head to the side. “I haven’t kissed a woman in…years.” She reached out and brushed an errant strand of hair back into place, away from Natasha’s cheek. “May I?”

     Natasha titled her head up, slightly. “I think…that sounds nice.”

     Pepper leaned down and kissed her, full on the mouth. Natasha’s lips held a touch of cherry-flavored gloss, and Pepper enjoyed the sensation of kissing someone with a soft mouth and skin without any course hair on it. Natasha smelled, faintly, of freshly cut grass and harsh soap with an undertone of copper, and tasted like peppermint.

     JARVIS cleared his throat. “If you two are going to tranquilize Sir, please do so, before you two seek out your quarters.”

     Pepper smiled into Natasha’s kiss. “I hope you don’t have plans tonight. I just have to deal with one last thing.”


	8. Clint and Bruce

     Clint was drunk. And lonely.  Bruce was off on some radiation thing that he’d tried to explain before he left, and when that didn’t work, _Tony_ had tried to explain, and that _really_ didn’t work, so Clint was left to his own devices. Nat was off with Pepper (again) doing something unholy to some corporation that Pepper wanted to bring into the SI fold. He had watched that relationship grow with no small amount of amusement and moderate horror. Pepper on her own was a good CEO. With Natasha at her side and with a personal reason to put all her talents to work for someone as high on the hog as Pepper? SI had damn near doubled its stocks in the last 3 months, and he’d heard that there were CEOs and company owners who had nightmares about Pepper’s heels of doom and the silent, deadly sharply dressed personal assistant at her side.

     Nat was having the time of her life.  Tony watched it all with a smirk and a proud smug look that said “Do I know how to pick CEOs or what” and “Take that assholes who said Pepper wasn’t good enough.” He didn’t seem to be showing too much regret. Y’know. After the first week or so of trying to hide the fact that he was avoiding Pepper and drinking himself to sleep.

     Clint didn’t think about Pepper and Tony’s relationship much, because it gave him a headache.  They were still best friends, colleagues, and Pepper _still_ took care of him. And Tony _still_ bickered and treated her like an extension of himself, and his better half. They just…weren’t together like that anymore.

     Ah well. He could talk. He had a relationship with Bruce Banner and his big green third wheel.  Who wasn’t that bad, actually. Hulk actually and a damn good sense of humor.

     It was July 10th, 2013. Before Bruce had left, he’d seemed out of sorts and touchier than usual, which had made for interesting times in the tower, and even more interesting times in the bedroom, since neither Clint nor Bruce really wanted the Hulk to show up when there were no clothes involved.  Clint had tried to get Bruce to tell him what the hell was the matter, and Bruce had just snapped at him and went off to meditate.

     So, he was alone and feeling sorry for himself and, did he mention, drunk?

     Oh yes. He did. Good. Because, because tequila.

     He took another drink of the bottle next to him, and padded into his bedroom to sleep. He tripped over a box peeking out from under the bed. It was a calendar, and it had Bruce’s thin chicken scratch notes all over it. And in red ink, there was an X over the 15th.

     And a rooftop conversation from a year ago came back to him. Two dates that Bruce lived with, from his brush with Stark’s nutso true-love detectors. The battle of New York and…this coming July 15th. Five days away.  He thought about how it would feel to know that you probably had somebody, or somebodies, and they were out of your reach.

     He stared at the calendar and took another swig of…whatever the hell this was. Strong. That’s what it was. 

     The bottle was empty. He looked at it in surprise, looked back down at the calendar, and said, “Fuck it.”

 

*

 

     Bruce was irritated and breathing deeply to keep himself calm. The so-called emergency had been…nothing. Nada. And he was going to go home earlier than he’d planned. He’d planned to fucking stay away until the 15th had passed, stayed away until the last of the fucking dates that had haunted him for over half a decade. He’d wanted to be in the middle of fucking nowhere when the last bit of his normalcy had slipped away. In case. 

     Also, he _knew_ he was on edge, and it didn’t really _do_ to be around people when he was as keyed up as he was. 

     But he was going home. No more excuses. And he really did want to see Clint again, and get back to his workshop where he was doing _actual_ work. And it had been easier, now that the Hulk had an outlet to keep control. He’d be ok. Probably. And if not…well. The Avengers would make sure he wouldn’t hurt anybody.

     He suppressed another wave of annoyance that he’d been called away by a paranoid SHIELD agent who didn’t know gamma radiation from solar because it wasn’t helping.

     He checked his watch as the jet crossed over into New York’s timezone and he gave a bitter smile. 

     “July 15th, 2013.  Bing.” He touched his wrist where the small rectangle had sat, and he could almost hear the 24 hour warning beeps going off. In another life, maybe.

 

*

 

     Clint paced his bedroom. He still couldn’t believe he had done this. 

     The TiMER on his wrist was brand new, blank, and felt a bit…silly.

     He had been drunk, and he had decided that what he should do was get a TiMER, show up when Bruce’s plane landed in like…a week or so, or maybe even bribe Stark to fly him out to wherever SHIELD had taken Bruce for this radiation emergency, and surprise him with…a blank TiMER? Y’know, to show him that the second date was supposed to be for Clint?

     Fuck, it had made sense a couple of days ago.  It had made sense with most of a bottle of tequila in him, and he had found one of those hole-in-the-wall joints that did ‘em at all hours for drunks on first dates, or folks who would drag their newest date out to get one as soon as they hit it off. Nat was furious with him; she pointed out that it’d look like he was trying to find somebody else since he _knew_ that Bruce couldn’t get one.  Tony had just been insulted that he’d found someone else to put on _last year’s_ model.

     Steve was off doing something classified for SHIELD, but he was pretty sure he’d be getting the “Captain America is disappointed in you, son” look when he got back. 

     And now, he was torn between getting it taken off or ripping it off himself and having to explain the new TiMER scar to Bruce when he got home…or…

     There was a polite knock that he _knew_. Bruce was home. Early. 

     Fuck.

     He started rolling his sleeve down, and said, “come in!”

     Bruce came in, looking pensive and pale and hunched over so far he looked like he was growing a hump.  In short, Bruce was not happy.

     Fuck.

     He was in the middle of rolling his sleeve down, and Bruce…he saw it, and he got that…betrayed, resigned look that made Clint’s heart hurt.

     “You…” Bruce broke off, and he could see Bruce’s body language get less…sad, and more…angry. 

     Fuuuuck.  

     Clint swallowed. “It’s not what you think. I…uh. Look. I was…”

     Their eyes met, and Clint saw a glimpse of gold and saw Bruce trying to desperately keep his breathing under control.

     Shit. He opened his mouth to say something, but he wasn’t sure what he could say at this point that would either help his case or stop Bruce from Hulking out, when the ceiling cleared its throat.

     “Mr. Banner, I believe I should inform you that while your situation is…unique, there is an 86.4 percent chance that your TiMER, should it have survived your transformation and internal radiation levels would be going off right now. If you like, I can make the ‘bing’ noises.”  JARVIS’s voice was smooth and calm.  “In any case, Mr. Barton did indeed have good, if inebriated intentions, so it would be unkind to kill him and ruin my carpeting.”

     There was a moment of silence, and Bruce’s face had gone from building blow-up to complete shock. Clint wasn’t sure his own face was any better.

     Bruce suddenly looked tired and ashamed. “Th-thanks, JARVIS.” He looked up at Clint.  “Sorry. Sorry. Even if…you…Maybe I should go to Anarctica for a while.”

     Clint, however was much more focused on the _other_ thing JARVIS had just said. “Wait…it’d be going off?”

     Bruce blinked slowly. “Clint, he was just interrupting me so I didn’t—“

     “I don’t make a habit of messing with the emotional implications of the TiMER devices. Especially for people under my care.”

     Bruce went wide-eyed and swallowed, cautiously. “JARVIS, how long…”

     “Your TiMER malfunction has been a problem I have been trying to unravel for a long time. I would not have said anything had the situation gotten…out of control. I reiterate, I cannot be 100 percent accurate in regards to you, Dr. Banner. With Clint’s additional information, however, I was able to connect up to a reasonable probability.” Clint snickered. Tony’s A.I. sounded exactly like Tony when he got pissy over something that was bothering him. 

     Bruce took off his glasses absently and cleaned them on the edge of his shirt. He looked directly at Clint, squinting a bit to compensate for his nearsightedness. “What.. _were_ you hoping to accomplish?”

     Clint shrugged. “Well…We met on your first TiMER date, rather, I met the Hulk.  He sniffed my hair, did I tell you that? And you told me…about…today. And I was lonely and drinking and. I thought…” Clint gave Bruce a helpless smile. “Uh. Happy July 15th, 2013?”

     Bruce stared at him, for a minute, and then started laughing, helplessly.   He crossed the room and pulled Clint into a tight hug. He looked back up at the discreet speaker where JARVIS’s voice had come from. “I…I think…I’d like to hear the bings, actually.”

     “Very well, Sir. Ahem.” 

     “ _Bing. bing. bing._ ”


	9. Steve

     The 21st century was weird. 

     It wasn’t weird in the way he thought it’d be weird—there were no flying cars, for instance, even though Mr. Howard Stark had basically already invented one, back in his day. It wasn’t even as different as he thought it’d be.  I mean, sure, there were aliens, and they’d sent a man to the moon, and women wore…well, they sure showed a lot more skin on a day to day basis then he was ever used to. He, y’know, expected all that, when they told him what had happened.  That was what the Future meant, right? Aliens and space travel, women wearing less, racial mixing, telephones that you could walk around with no matter where you were, sleek automobiles (cars, now) that went faster and looked like something out of a pulp novel. 

     It was weird in how much had changed in terms of social justice and equality, and depressing as to how little had changed. He was so, so proud of the America that had finally embraced people of all colors, and so, so disappointed in how much his country still betrayed them. And the first time he saw two men walking down Park Ave holding hands, and kissing each other like it was nothing at a bus stop…

     He caught himself staring. He had held his breath, and he’d noticed how little anybody else was paying attention to them.

     It was weird. But nice. And it made him miss Bucky all over again.

     He still knew that there were the old fear and hatred, but…two men could get married. Two women could get married. In New York. By a judge—or even a priest, if they were from a religion that would do it. 

     But there were things that the future held that he just sat and boggled at. Like…coffee. It wasn’t just coffee. It all had weird names, and added things, and sugar and milk, and ice? And different ways of steaming milk?  He had just gone into a nice-looking place looking for a cup of joe.  The bored-looking young lady with the blue (seriously, blue) hair had welcomed him into the shop, and then spouted off a stream of fast gibberish that clearly meant something to the other people in the shop, but sounded like Italian to him. Which, it was, really, since it tasted like that fancy coffee he’d had once in Italy that he couldn’t rightly pronounce the name of at the time.

     He got his coffee, and ignored the now-useless twinge of guilt for putting cream and sugar into it.  No one was rationing that stuff anymore.  It was _good_ coffee. But he drank it and reflected on how weird this little cafe was—weirder because it was clearly so… _normal_ to everyone else.

     And then two _somethings_   in the shop went bing bing bing and it didn’t sound like a cell phone, and the blue-haired lady was staring at a woman in a mens’ business suit (or maybe it wasn’t a man’s suit, he couldn’t tell really. He had been told that women wore suit coats and trousers too now).  The people in the shop started smiling and clapping, and one of the other cafe-workers (baristas?) came out and congratulated his co-worker. The business-lady looked down at her wrist—at the weird little rectangle on her wrist (the thing that he’d been told was something most folks had, but that they, SHEILD wanted him to be more comfortable in his new time before explaining)—and he was very lost.

     He asked, later, for them to explain it. The TiMERs, one of Tony Stark’s early inventions, one that pulled in almost as much as money as the weapons he no-longer made at the height of Stark Industries’ weapons manufacturing profits, were nearly ubiquitous. He had thought they were like…a futuristic watch. Or somehow connected to the cellular phones that everybody carried.

     But no. TiMERs were much, much weirder.

     They predicted when you wold meet your One True Love.  If the other person had one too. If they existed. 

     “So,” he had asked when he had gotten back to the tower and described the scene, “those two ladies?”

     Tony grinned. “Probably moving in with each other as we speak.”

     Steve just nodded. And drummed his fingers on the counter. “And…most people have them? You and Pepper?”

     Tony pulled up his left sleeve a bit, and showed off his.

     “It looks…”

     “Hey, it’s not bad for version 1.0—really, if I’m honest, it was .01. I mean. I built this when I was black-out drunk.” Tony tugged his sleeve down. “You’ll notice, I don’t even have numbers in mine. Just dashes. Means…either I don’t have a person, or if I have one, They don’t have a TiMER.”

     Steve drank a sip of cool, clean tap water. He loved the taste of the city’s water, even with the slight floride tang. He caught a flash of actual emotion on Tony’s face, bitterness, maybe, or resignation—hard to tell with Tony, since those two emotions were so closely linked.  He had noticed that Pepper had one. He bit his lip. He knew Tony loved Pepper. It must have hurt when Pepper didn’t…match.

      He asked how it worked, and didn’t really understand the answer, it was all probabilities and measuring things, and astronomical calculations, and seriously weird science. But it did erase the unconscious pained look that was behind Tony’s eyes after he had looked at it.

     But his next statement shocked Steve back into the conversation. “Hey, you don’t…like…have a thing against same-sex relationships, right?”

     He shook his head.

     “Because…Pepper’s went off, and Natasha just got back, and I don’t think either of those two are going to come out of Pepper’s suite for, like, a week.”

     He blinked. Natasha? Natasha had one? Natasha, the spy who never showed her true face, who could kill a man without breaking a sweat or her stride, _she_ had a True Love Detector? All he could get out was “N-Nat-“

     Tony snorted at what _must_ have been a particularly amusing expression. “Oh, she had to get one put in for a mission. A real one. I didn’t ask, and I don’t want to know—when she says if she tells you she’ll have to kill you, I, for one, take her _extremely_ seriously. And it, like, had a date and a number, which I had to erase, for. Uh. Reasons that I didn’t ask about, and I noticed afterward that Pepper’s went off, and it had the same time stamp, and sure enough, Pepper came in to tranq me into sleepy-time when I was making…what-ever the hell I was making last night, and Natasha and she were sucking some serious face, so I assume they…ah…”

     Steve couldn’t help it. He started laughing. “Oh, god in heaven, those two are going to be _terrifying_.”

     Tony smiled, wide and relieved. “You don’t know the half of it.  I’m looking forward to my stocks going way the hell up. Pepper is the world’s most efficient CEO, and Natasha now has a serious investment in helping her out, so. Invest in Stark Industries now, my friend, invest now, because by the end of the week, I expect Hammer Tech to fold, and the current CEO to mysteriously disappear. Pepper holds grudges a lot longer than I do.”

     Steve just shook his head and drained the rest of his glass of water.

     “So. For real? You don’t mind?”

     Steve coughed, slightly. “No. No. I don’t mind. I wish them the best. I…it’s nice that people can…just…fall in love. With whomever.”

     And that, it seemed, was that. But the idea of the TiMER weighed on him. He noticed it now, and he noticed how it was the basis for all the romantic movies, how it was everywhere, how people talked about them. How he’d see people surreptitiously checking his wrist, like the lack of one said something important about him. 

     And, he supposed, it kind of did. Y’know, if he’d been born when he _looked_ like he’d been born. And not a boy from the depression who’d fought in WWII. He had dreams, sometimes, of getting one, and it staying blank for the rest of his days, because he was supposed to be with Bucky or Peggy. They were good dreams, for the most part, but then he’d wake up, and he’d feel their absence like a hole in his chest and he spend the day in Central Park sketching birds and trying to clear his mind of 80 year old ghosts.

     He was lonely.  Sure, he had the team, but…how could he go about even thinking of finding a steady girl (or maybe even a guy? Could he?) when they all had these little electronic timers that were running down to when they’d meet the one they were…what did Tony say, the most compatible with? He saw the hope and longing sighs on people, looking scared/hopeful/joyful/trepidatious, who stared into the eyes of everyone they passed, looking for the person they would meet _that day_ who would be theirs, and he knew what he looked like—he could tell some of them were hoping it would be him, but they’d look at him, and then look at his bare wrist and their eyes would just move over him like he wasn’t even there.

     It reminded him of being small and un-dateable, and clearly-going-to-be-a-bachelor-forever. He didn’t like it.

     He tried to figure out if…it…would even work for him, without the embarrassment of asking Tony directly. He searched on the Internet for “TiMER questions,” and “TiMER after your love dies” and everything he could think of, and it was all a resounding….nobody knew. Stark Industries was looking into it, they were waiting for the generations who had grown up with the things to have more life experience, see if they could reset after a spouse died, or if they would reset if there was another compatible person. If they could work with systems of more than one—there were some people who said it happened, and some people who were convinced those people had hacked or gamed the system in some way.

     Basically, the Internet remained as incomprehensible as ever, with so much information, and so many voices that he couldn’t figure out what was going on. 

     He was having a fruitless searching-night after a particularly bad-happy dream. Bucky had survived, and Peggy had welcomed both of them into her life, and…

     He was going to be alone forever. He covered his eyes and took deep breaths, not wanting to cry over something so…so…stupid as being unable to get a date, and it mostly worked. He just…this was one of the things he had been so excited about, when the experiment worked—and when Peggy had shown interest in him—heck, a lot of girls had shown interest in him, and not just as Bucky’s friend’s pity date. And he’d come back full circle. Without a TiMER, no one wanted a long-term relationship. 

     He sighed, loudly, and said, “I just wish I didn’t have to ask Tony about these damn things. I…”

     “You do not have to ask Sir about the TiMERs, Captain.” A smooth British voice came from the ceiling, “I am more than capable of answering any such questions, although, judging by your search history, you are asking questions about which there is no concrete answer as of yet.”

     He blinked. “JARVIS? You…know about the…little love timers?”

     “I do much of the calculations, I manage the database and security systems, and I am an integral part of the research for the future of the TiMER brand.”

     “Then…would…it work for me?”

     There was a long silence. “I do not know for sure without the device for your wrist. However, I believe, there is a 75% probability that the TiMERs can find a new partner if the other has had some sort of misfortune befall them.  That is based on the current data I have stored, and the direction the Research and Development department has been looking.”

     Steve sighed. “Well…do you think it is worth the risk of having a blank one?”

     There was a long pause. “I am not qualified to answer that for you. If it helps; for Sir, he still believes it is worth it, or he would have removed his years ago.

    Steve nodded. “Thank you, JARVIS. That…does help.”

     “My pleasure, Captain Rogers.”

     Steve didn’t do anything about it for a long time. He saw how it affected the other members of his team, and watched their relationships grow whether they had one or not--but the TiMERs seemed to give the relationships a trajectory they wouldn't without them. He thought about what ifs, what if it stayed blank—what if it _didn’t_. He worried he’d be betraying Bucky and Peggy’s memories, but he could almost hear them both telling him that he should move on with his life, settle down, and find someone to love. What if the real betrayal of their memories was to stay alone?

     And it didn’t help that he lived with the rest of the Avengers.  Especially Tony. Who had those dark eyes, and that quick mind, and that brash cocky swagger that reminded him of so many of his former friends. He didn’t deny he found Tony attractive, but he wasn’t…going to assume things about the _son_ of the man who kinda built him. Who had been a friend. Who definitely would (probably) not have been real happy with some of the thoughts he had been having about said son.

     But then Tony would show up for breakfast covered in soot and grease and talk with wild gestures and techno-babble about some new tweak he made to his armor, or about a newer, lighter, bodysuit for Steve, or a better bow for Clint. About how hard he worked to make clothes for Bruce so that at least the man didn’t have to have the added humiliation of nakedness compounding his trauma of surrendering to his anger and the Other Guy.  How he’d watched Pepper, who he clearly loved, be with Natasha and just be happy that the woman he loved had found someone who loved her, and who would keep her safe, and burn the world down to keep her happy.

     In short, he had a not-so-small crush on Tony Stark. Which was…well, it wasn’t ideal. He could barely understand the man, and he was outwardly callous with his words and worked hard to maintain an attitude that bordered on the reckless. He was a showoff and an asshole, and…

     And he threw himself, wholeheartedly at problems until the problem went away, or he figured out how to maneuver around and deal with said problem. 

     And he was really, really good looking.

     He had that look that had always turned Steve tongue tied and awkward; dark eyes, dark hair, an aggressive attitude, and a devil-may-care smirk that told you that they were going to take you for a ride. He had been helpless against that look in Bucky and in Peggy and now in Tony. 

     He was walking back from Central Park, sketchbook in hand, enjoying a day where nobody seemed to be trying to blow anybody up, where no mad scientist had decided that he had been ignored for long enough, and no aliens tried to take over the world again, when he passed by a shop that was just opening. It was a TiMER shop, and they were having a “free installation day!” and he thought about the two young people in love sitting on a bench, clearly having a “first date” after their TiMERs had gone off, finding out how much they had in common, and seeing that bond grow over the course of their conversation…

     He had sketched them for a couple hours, basking in vicarious love as they completely forgot about the outside world. He remembered how that felt, how much the first kiss of love burned, how suddenly it didn’t matter that you could be caught by a nosy neighbor, it didn’t matter that you _knew_ it couldn’t be forever, that you’d both have to go off and settle down with a girl. Or how it felt to finally have a girl in your arms, a shoulder to cry on after the worst had happened, knowing that you had someone to come back to, that would be waiting for you. Someone to teach you to dance, even if it was in the privacy of your own home to the scratchy sound of a record player…

     And he never had learned to dance.

     He had gone in. They didn’t recognize him, but the counter girl had remarked that he was about to make somebody very, very happy. 

     The chair they brought him to looked…medical, and he was bemused for a second that all of his hopes for love seemed to come after dealing in some sort of technological marvel. They told him it would pinch, a bit.  He closed his eyes. And they gave a countdown, and there was a sharp pain in his left wrist.

     There was a bing bing bing sound as it turned itself on. He opened one eye and saw them beaming at him, and a _second_ bing bing bing sound happened. The shopgirl clapped her hands. “You’re _definitely_ making somebody very happy right now! Congratulations!”

     00d 000h 45m


	10. Tony and Steve

     Tony was pushing a horrible smoothie away from his face when a weird sound came from his…wrist? What?

     He looked at his left wrist in utter shock.

     It was…beeping. Like his old college alarm clock, and he was reminded that he had…taken apart the damn thing at some point during his blackout engineering binge and had never quite figured out where all the parts had gotten to.

     Well. That solved one mystery then. Right. 

     00d 00h 45m

     He just…stared. 30 (mumble) years of loneliness and trying to forget about the stupid desire that fueled the whole damn TiMER thing, and now…it was going to happen in 45 minutes? Like…how the fuck was that supposed to work? He had…yes. He had grease in his hair, he had scorched the shirt he was wearing, and..oh yes, his dumb bot was _still_ trying to make him drink a smoothie with…yes. That was gasoline he was smelling.  Or maybe that was on his hands? He sniffed them. Nope. That was his hands. 

     “JARVIS? Is the smoothie that DUM-E is trying to force feed me going to kill me?”

     “No, Sir. However, the fact that you wiped your face with the gas-rag after fixing Captain Roger’s bike, makes drinking anything until after you’ve had a shower a terrible idea.”

     Tony nodded. “Did I give myself a loophole in this TiMER thing? Can you tell me who it is, so I can go shower and act all suave when I meet them?”

     “I am not allowed to give out that kind of information. Even to you. _Especially_ to you. You were quite specific the last time you went over the security protocols.”

     Tony nodded. Yeah, that was a good idea. At least it always _had_ been a good idea, but now he only had 45 minutes to make himself _not_ smell like gas, and look like, well, Tony Stark, and less like a mad scientist who took apart cars for a living.

     Even if, y’know, he basically _was_ a mad scientist who had taken apart and rebuilt a motorcycle to a) improve it’s sound, b) make it more bullet proof, because Steve was like a bullet magnet and he kept using his bike as a shield, like he didn’t have the worlds most incredible shield already, and c) give it a set of handles so that he could pick up Steve and the bike if he had to to get them out of the way of something. It had seemed like a good idea at the time, but now…

     Now he looked like a greasemonkey and he was only 45 minutes away from the love of his life. 

     Which was bullshit. He had waited this long, would it have killed his match to wait…like…a day?

     Besides…he’d…have to have met them naturally, right? In 45 minutes? But..he hadn’t planned on leaving the workshop. Unless…the smoothie really was going to make him sick and he was about to go to the hospital (which would be an even worse way to meet his match, I mean, drinking a smoothie a broken robot made you because you didn’t want to hurt their feelings? Terrible.) Of course, now that he had a time frame, he felt the irrational desire to just…stay where he was. A sort of “fuck you” to fate, and to the ridiculous idea he’d had when he was a damn college student that everybody had a true love out there and that he wanted to know exactly when he’d meet them.

     So…he pushed the smoothie away. He…did go wash his hands, and his face because…fate or no, he really didn’t want to smell like gasoline.  And changed his shirt to one that had less scorch marks. And was less stained. And didn’t show off the glowing nightlight in his chest. But he was staying where he was, dammit. 

     Of course…if he missed them…would he find them again? Would he go back to having a blank wrist? He tried to go back to work, but his focus was shot to hell.

     00d 00h 15m

     Fuck. He couldn’t stay here. He’d go upstairs. It _had_ to be someone at SI. Who could he meet in 15 minutes?

     He threw some water on his hair and dragged a comb through it. And his shirt was..what the shit shirt had he thrown on? He went to a closet and pulled out an actual button down shirt.

     “JARVIS?” Tony asked, calmly, “if I just…stay here…”

     “I cannot give out TiMER information.” 

     Tony glowered at one of JARVIS’s speaker/video inputs. His A.I. had that smug tone he got when he was enjoying himself. And his cellphone started ringing. He answered it with a distracted flick of his wrist, and Steve’s wide blue eyes stared at him, looking vaguely panicked. That was never good.

     “Tony? I need…I...what do I do? I…I’m…a bit lost.” Steve put his hand through his hair, giving it a more rumpled look then he’d ever really seen him, short of an actual battle. That wasn't a good sign. It usually meant that somehting had aleary exploded or would, shortly.

     Tony’s flicked his fingers out and readied a suit. “Steve. Stay there. I’ll come to you.” 

     “I…no? I…wait. How long will that take?”

     “Less than 15 minutes, Steve. I’ve…got a bit of a date with destiny. But I’ll come swing by you first.”

     Steve opened his mouth, then closed it. And swallowed. “Y-yeah. Yeah. Thanks. Tony. I’ll…see you shortly?”

     Tony gave him a short salute, and threw himself into the suit and blasted off. Well, now he knew how he got out of the house and it wasn’t a bad smoothie decision after all.  He also got to have his suit on, which was always good for first impressions. Steve was…in central park, if the location in his phone was correct, and it was one of Tony’s phones, so it was. 

     00d 00h 001m

     Tony landed next to Steve, and immediately looked around, Steve…had a bouquet of flowers with him, clearly bought from a street vendor that was already starting to wilt a bit. Tony blinked, and the suit registered a new piece of Stark Tech in the area. And he focused on the glint of metal at Steve’s side on his wrist.

     He flipped the visor open, and looked directly into Steve Roger’s eyes.

     And JARVIS, that bastard, let the damned alarm sound. _Steve’s_ had the pleasant, market-tested musical bings, but there he was with the EEEENT EEEENT EEEENT of a damned 80s alarm clock. 

     They stood there for a moment, just staring stupidly at each other. 

     Tony’s mind, for once in his life, was completely quiet. The first coherent thought was, “Steve is _gay_?” the second, followed shortly after, was “Hal-le-fucking-lu-yah” and “Holy shit holy shit I’m going to kiss _Captain America_.” And then, “Fuck, I’m glad I’m in the suit—I’m tall enough to kiss him”

     He was not good at not listening to that inner voice, and even less good at not saying what that voice was saying, but he was pretty sure that he didn’t actually want to say what he was thinking, so he reached out, and touched Steve’s face. 

     And Steve grabbed him and gave him the hottest kiss he’d ever been fortunate enough to be on the receiving end of.

     When they pulled away, Tony waved to the various people who had stopped to take a picture of Tony Stark getting a (really really really great) kiss on the lips from a (really really unbelievably handsome) guy after both of their TiMERs went off. 

     He was gonna make the cover of People again. He stared at Steve, who was starting to turn bright red. It was adorable.

     Steve covered his mouth with his hand. “I cannot believe I just did that. I…it's ok, right? I didn’t just…get us…” 

     “Steve, I’m going to have you in front of a damn Justice of the Peace within the week. The only trouble you’ve gotten yourself into is that now, you’ll never be rid of me.”

     Steve threw his head back,and laughed, clearly shaking off some adrenaline. “I was…just thinking the same thing.”

     Tony smiled, and put his steel-encased arm around Steve’s waist. “Good. Lets get home. I have an A.I. to yell at.”

     When they landed on Stark Tower, JARVIS greeted them with what was _definitely_ his smug voice. And then said, “I have prepared a playlist of dance songs from the 1940s. Sir, I have reason to believe that Captain Rogers is in need of a dance lesson.”


End file.
